Abstract Students have always been interested in performance. The author of this article has used this interest and put it in teaching short stories to Iranian students who are learning English as a foreign language. The author had an opportunity to do the research in his short story classes. The total number of the students who registered for short story course was eighty five. The students were divided into two groups of experimental and controlling. One group of the students read the stories and performed the roles of the selected short stories. In the second class, the students were just given the opportunity to read the stories. The results and findings of the study show that, performance had undeniable effect in learning the stories and the different features of short stories and in general, literature.

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